out of Russia with me. With the war on it would be harder for them to leave.
Henry and Caroline met me at the ship with a great spray of pink roses and spirited me home to the apartment. How lovely it was to feel terra firma and hear the sounds of New York: our big American horses clopping about the city and so much English spoken, all cocooned from the troubles of war-torn Europe.
I kept Sofya’s little blue charm with me at all times for it calmed me to feel it smooth and cool in my hand as we read the war news pouring in from Europe. We followed every new development, but soon Henry and I became preoccupied with our daughter Caroline’s terrible cough, for which Dr. Forbes suggested a respite from the Southampton salt air. Henry pounced on this opportunity to hire an energetic, young real estate agent named Noel Bishop, and we prowled the hinterlands of Connecticut for a country home. Mother’s people, the Van Winkles, had been up in Litchfield County for years, but it seemed a pointless pursuit, motoring about, peering into ramshackle estates, Mother in tow.
We drove up through the Nutmeg State to Bethlehem, winding down country roads on an unseasonably chilly, early September afternoon in our convertible Packard Phaeton, top up. Mother’s fresh-scrubbed driver Thomas Whitmarsh manned the wheel, splendid in his navy blue uniform, posture erect.
Mother sat in the back with me, and Caroline sat between us on the persimmon leather seat, arms linked in ours. Having come straight from school, Caroline wore her Chapin uniform, black stockings, a white cotton blouse with a sailor-style collar and dark green tie, topped with a light green tunic.
Henry sat up with Thomas, Noel between them on the wide seat. Alert as a ship’s captain on the lookout for icebergs, Henry scanned the countryside, his arm and cigar out the window.
“Bethlehem was first inhabited in 1734 by pioneers,” Noel Bishop said. “Soon after, young Joseph Bellamy ended up conducting the first theological school in America at the house we’re about to see.”
As we glided over gently rolling hills passing farm after farm, Henry said, “One feels a certain freedom up here.”
Mother smoothed Caroline’s hair. “Some are more suited to the farmer’s life than others, I suppose.”
Henry flicked his ash and a shower of orange sparks flew past my window. “I confess I’d like to till the earth a bit.”
“Must be in the blood,” Mother said. “Of course, all those Louisiana plantation people once owned their fellow human beings.”
“Henry’s uncle owned the slaves, Mother. In 1860. Are you forgetting your own grandparents owned fellow humans? In South Carolina I—”
“I’ll never forget Charleston,” Mother said, tugging on one glove.
How many times had she told us the story of her mother taking her eldest sisters to witness the terrible slave market there? They spoke with a young mother who’d just watched her husband and children sold and led away in chains, which seared a staunch abolitionist streak in Mother and her seven siblings.
Henry turned to us in the backseat with a smile. “You’re not still holding that against me, are you, Mother?”
Mother tucked a stray lock of hair behind Caroline’s ear.
As if sensing familial discord was about to hurt his sale, young Noel sat up straighter. “We’re coming into Bethlehem now.”
We slowed to a crawl and slid under great arches of ancient oaks and elms, past the village green with its army of spring grass already thick as the bristles on a boar’s head brush. It was a pretty little village, with a town center so small one could send a rock across it with little trouble.
“Up on that rise is Bird Tavern,” Noel said, holding out an arm in the direction of the commanding colonial home on the gentle rise just off the green. “It was once a stop on the underground railroad.”
Mother perked up at that.
“Just to your left, that Federal house you’ll see as we pass the green is our destination.”
Caroline squeezed my hand tighter. “I see it. I can already tell I’ll like everything about it.”
Though dusk was falling, there was enough light to see up the gentle slope to the wood facade looming above us. It was painted an unbecoming shade of yellow, its shape marred by various verandas and outcroppings.
Thomas had barely stopped at the curb before Caroline, Henry, and the agent unfolded themselves from the car and sprinted up the hill. They ran under the porte cochere and disappeared through the